Promise Not to Promise Anymore
by JannP
Summary: Joey and Pacey come to terms with their s4 breakup in their one ways. First-person perspective from both based on a couple of Ingrid Michaelson songs. Oneshot, rated T.


I have tied myself up in knots for a boy before. There's only been one other boy. And the knots weren't so tight. But it's been done and I got over it that time, too. Well okay, some might argue that I let him kiss me because I hadn't managed to untie all the knots just yet. I might argue it myself if there was any truth to it. I tried to tell you so many times that the ties weren't there, or at least weren't the same. I never lied.

I let him kiss me because, well, it was different. I've had a whole year of reading your signals and watching your face. His face is different and I didn't see it coming. I forgot how to read him or anticipate that or… I forgot how to want it or how to let it feel good and comforting. Instead, it just felt like I was clinging. There weren't enough knots left in that rope for me to keep a hold and the twine slipped right through my fingers. It left a couple of burns on the way down with the fast fall, but those have healed over and somehow now it feels like I have a thicker skin.

But we're not _really_ talking about knots, or rope, or skin, or even burns.

We're talking about whatever it was you left behind when you sailed away without me. I'm sure you feel like your whole future is out there, just waiting for you to find it like it will be marked on an old treasure map with a big red "X". I feel a little bit differently. Like maybe my future is sneaking up on me, in the form of a big brick wall, but I'm so busy looking back that I don't see it coming. Eventually, I'm going to face forward again, run into the wall, and possibly break my nose.

But we're not talking about maps, or walls, or even broken noses.

We're talking about broken hearts. We're talking about my broken heart. I remember the first time Dawson hurt me. I remember that feeling of being isolated, somewhere on the outside and looking in at something I desperately wanted. I remember that feeling of anger and the jealousy that came with watching him pursue everything I wanted with someone else. I remember the next time, too, the swift disappointment that came with sanctimony and being pushed in what someone else felt was the only direction. I remember dragging my feet and taking my time, and then finally exploding and unleashing all my pent up frustration and fury – and then using the tiny bit of energy I had left to walk away.

This time, though, this time it's different. I could be angry with you, but it would be wasted. How could I ever _really_ be angry with someone I loved who was listening to his heart? So then I'm left with all this anger and nowhere to direct it. I feel like a five year old who is futilely stomping my foot and crying that the soccer game didn't go my way.

But we aren't talking about things that didn't go my way. That list is far too long to start in on.

We're talking about this mass of conflicting, revolving emotions that have finally left me numb and turned me into someone I don't recognize. I've spent the majority of the summer going out with Jack and Jen, who seem to think they need to cheer me up. They don't seem to understand that I don't feel it. I can paste a smile on, I can fake it. I just can't really feel like the deserving beneficiary of their effort. And it's occurred to me that, because you left and Dawson left, I'm the only one around to receive their efforts. I'm their project, and I've never done well with that kind of pity.

Not that it isn't fun to hang out with them, because ever since Jen and I got over that whole girl-competition thing, and ever since Jack realized he was gay and left me in the most gentle way he could in spite of that it's been fun to hang out with them. But the majority of this summer has, for me, been like when you eat your favorite food but it doesn't live up to the flavor you remember. I've been so focused on the fact that it doesn't feel _right_ exactly that I've by and large missed everything else I enjoyed about it.

Like when we got caught in the rain one night. You know how much I love the rain, and instead of being a funny mistake that we laughed off, it became a burden. I got very quiet and shivered all the way home without saying a word, and when I realized what was wrong, it hurt too much—like when my wet hair wind-whipped across my face while we were running back to Grams' Buick. It was like an audible, tactile slap to me when I realized that you weren't there. If you were there, it wouldn't have happened because you always had this weird sailor-esque sense that rain was approaching. Your sense for impending doom only failed once, and then the boat sank. Your sense of when to run – which those of us who love you call your sense of adventure to disguise some of the more ugly realities – has only failed _twice._ That time, and one other, and it was the time you broke every promise you ever made me. You ran away before there was a real ending in sight.

We made an awful lot of promises to each other, you and me. I promised not to go anywhere without you; you left anyway. I promised that you had every single piece of my fixed heart; I lied anyway. I lied and I accepted something from Dawson that you couldn't give me, and it broke your heart. I promised not to break your heart; it broke anyway.

But we're not talking about your broken heart. Because I don't think it actually exists.

It's like there's this wall between you and _feeling_. You only feel what filters through the wall, and I think right now you're shutting everything out. This comes from a lifetime of knowing you and a year of loving you that has felt like an eternal blink of an eye. It's been so long and gone so fast all at once. But that doesn't mean I don't know you.

You block out everything because you have a huge heart and feeling everything would put it over capacity. There is a saying about opening floodgates, and that's how it is for you with the entire emotional world. If you open up too much, you feel it all and you can't make sense of it because it's too much. I know because you opened up to me. And I watched, as you yelled and you pointed and you fumbled for explanation and sensitive words where none existed, I watched the wall return: brick by brick, word by word, with my tears as the cement. You built it all back up, you took every tool I had to do it; you left me with nothing.

So where does someone with nothing start? Where do I go to begin again? I'm still figuring that out. I'm trying to just understand and not be bitter and not be that crazy ex-girlfriend who keeps everything you ever gave me in a well-worn box under my bed. And then sets that box on fire when you piss me off by moving on, only to leave it on your doorstep while it's burning. I won't call you in the middle of the night and leave a rambling, sobbing message on your answering machine like Andie did (more than once). Partly because you don't have a phone number, and partly because that's not how I operated. If I squint a little and think really hard, I can remember how I used to work. I remember how it all worked before it was broken.

But we're not talking about how I'm broken. We're talking about what I've lost.

I've lost the knots. I've lost the butterflies. I've lost that feeling, maybe that small glimpse or glimmer of hope that allowed me to think that everything would be fine. I used to think I would be just fine. Now I'm hoping that I can simply _be._ I didn't want to be there when I was, saying goodbye. I didn't want to watch you go and wonder when or even if you would be back. I didn't want to be staring down the long haul of a lifetime without you. But I did it. You never gave me a choice. The choice to be together may have been mine; the choice to leave was yours. You took me out of the equation.

I never told you something. It's always been my secret. I don't believe in signs. I don't believe in soulmates, destiny, meant-to-be or any of that crap. I don't believe in anything I can't see. That's part of the reason I stopped painting. I don't have the vision to close my eyes and paint my future. I know what Dawson's aunt said, and I know what he spent the better part of our lives trying to plant inside my head, but I think it's all untrue. I don't think there's some magical hand that reaches down and touches your life with meaning or direction. When you said that not getting accepted to college was a sign we shouldn't be together, I have never wanted to punch someone in the face so much in my entire life. Circumstances are what you make of them. You choose your path, you find your way. You paint your future only as you live it. You chose to leave. You chose to walk away rather than dealing with your anger, your disappointment, your frustration. It was your choice.

But we're not talking about choices. We're talking about cause and effect.

You made choices. You made _bad_ choices. You left me behind to clean up the entire mess. You left me to deal with the fallout by myself. But regardless of how I feel about it, it's there. It's tangible. It's something I see and taste and touch and feel. Well, it's something I used to feel before the part of me that feels things was broken. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Since I don't feel much these days, it's safe to say I have some time to sort through that. Although this may be the most extreme example, you're not the first guy to do this to me. At the rate I'm going, you won't be the last.

I thought you _were_ the last. I mean, I thought you would be the last one, because I thought we would be together for a lifetime. I thought that, when you kissed me on the side of the road, it would be my last first kiss. I thought the night in the ski lodge would be my last first time making love. I thought you had the last hands I would hold, the last voice I would hear, and the last great love of my life. The great love to _last_ _my life_.

But we're not talking about my lifespan. We're talking about my future.

I can't close my eyes and paint my future. I know, by this time tomorrow, I'll be in the dorms at Worthington and I'll be getting started on a new chapter of my life. I just can't stop looking back at the last chapter, the one that started when we sailed away together. Can you start a new chapter while you're still thumbing through the old one and just hoping there wasn't something you missed? I keep searching the words, line by line and paragraph by paragraph, just looking for something – for anything – that will keep me from making the same mistakes again in the undetermined future.

But what mistake did I make? Is it so simple that it could be one mistake? I've been angry, and thinking maybe my mistake was that I put my faith in the wrong person – _again._ But I'm not sure that's the case. As I've already mentioned, I'm not faithful. I don't believe in things I can't see. I could see lots of things in you, things that are the very center of who you are and are the foundation of the man you're becoming. They're kind of hazy now, and I'm afraid they will be lost to me forever if I can't get this under control. Those lines blurred for both of us, I'm afraid. I couldn't get it under control for you, and I certainly can't control it and clarify anything for myself.

But we're not talking about control. We're talking about letting go.

I think I understand your point. Maybe in the future, we will find a way to be together again. Maybe in the future, you're going to come back. Or maybe in the future, I'll figure out where you are and stand on a dock to proclaim my certain love for you. Maybe I will have remembered how to be _that_ girl—who feels things and (eventually) acts on them. Maybe in the future, we'll find a way to bury everything else that has overtaken us—all the doubt, the insecurity, the anger, the disappointment, the hurt, the loneliness—and start again from square one. Maybe in the future, we'll know how to close our eyes and paint. Maybe we'll even get a blank canvas to start on.

But we're not talking about starting on a blank canvas. We're talking about wiping this one clean.

The only way to get rid of these knots I'm twisted in is to untie them. To _really_ let it go. Letting go is not my specialty. There have been a lot of things we shared that weren't my specialty, and now it seems like there's one more thing you have left to teach me. If nothing else, this will be your legacy. You will have at least left me with a blank canvas, a smooth rope, and a future.

Maybe if I start with those tools, you'll come back to me. Maybe somewhere underneath all the drama, trauma, and garbage, the girl you fell in love with is waiting to be found. Maybe I can be that person again. Maybe I can remember how she felt or what she looked like. Maybe in the future, I'll be able to remember how _you _feel or what _you_ look like.

But for now, all I see is nothing and all I feel, when I feel anything, is the fear of repeating my unknown mistakes and the fear of spending my whole life feeling this way. If I'm ever going to be that girl again, I've got to let go. _ I've_ got to let go entirely so _she_ can come back and grab on and hold on tight and never, ever let go again.

But I'm not talking about promises, not anymore. It's all about the maybes.

* * *

I've tied all these knots before. I've stood on that dock, I've been at that boat launch, and I've even navigated these waters before. But these days, it seems like I'm seeing through different eyes. I'm not sure I like the change in the view, either.

But there's really nothing I can do about that now. It is the way it is, and I've got to accept that.

Except that I see you, dancing on the beach in ghostly shadows and I hear your voice whispering or laughing and carried on every sea breeze. At night, I can't look up. I keep my eyes on the deck and my mind on the work. If I let my mind slip, it slides right back to you and to another summer under the same stars. If I let it slip far enough down that slope, I can almost remember what it was like to share all that with you. But then I inevitably flash past everything we shared, and stop on the present where I'm here without you.

But there's really nothing I can do about that now. It is the way it is, and I've got to accept that.

I've tried everything I can think of to get my memory to let go or to at least stop working and stop inundating me with every flash of tears in your eyes, every catch in your voice, and every shaking hand pressed to your forehead or smoothing your hair. I had gone a long time where you were secure and easy in our relationship, a long time without seeing your nervous, twitchy gestures. It just about killed me to see you use every single one during our last conversation; I wanted to yell just to relieve the frustration of being back in that place, the place where I make you _nervous._ The place where you don't know who I am or, more specifically, who I am _to you_. Like you want me to fit into your life but you aren't sure how I ever could. As I watched the nerves and the uncertainty and all the hurt written on your face, in your posture, and heard it tied into your words, I could feel three words sticking in the back of my throat. I knew they would help you somehow, but I couldn't say them. My hands were rooted to my sides. I knew they could soothe you with well-practiced and intimate ease, but I couldn't move them.

It is the way it is and I've got to accept that.

I tried accepting it by pretending I'd moved on. There is shame in it for me, you know. I still feel like I'm taken or like I'm committing some sort of sin every time I touch her. I feel like it would change how you feel—maybe _felt_ –about me if you knew I'd already fallen into someone else's bed. Or let her fall into mine. I feel like it would change how you feel about me if you knew sex hadn't changed anything and I can't remember, even while she's still there, what she feels like or smells like or tastes like. Regardless of whom I'm holding, you are smell, touch, taste, sight, and sound. I can't lose myself, or lose this feeling in the pit of my stomach, in someone else. I'm already lost, and I'm _still_ lost in you.

There's really nothing I can do about that now.

I wanted to know every part of you. I came to know every part of you, or so I thought. I gave you every part of me that I could. I only wish I'd had more to give, because you deserved more. You still deserve more. I'm afraid you always will. I'm afraid that I will always feel like this, like this boy who is just not good enough and like this boy who is just tagging along in your shadow while he falls short somehow and always, _always _runs to play catch up and maybe overcompensates sometimes so I can get ahead. You can't handle, you shouldn't have to handle, the dead weight of all my baggage and doubt and insecurity. I used to think you were strong enough to handle it. You are; you are stronger than you know and that's one thing I was never wrong about. You just shouldn't _have_ to handle it. You should only have good things. Focus on the life you want and focus on the things you've earned. As much as it kills me to think it, as much as it felt like part of me died when I said it, there is no place for me in that life. There is no boat for us this year, there is only Boston and Capeside and two very, very different people struggling to make sense of things that are in large part nonsense. But that's life, isn't it? Sorting through, keeping the pieces that fit and losing those that don't. You think I fit. I think I don't.

There's really nothing I can do about that now. It is the way it is and I've got to accept it.

I've got to accept it because I can't change it. If I keep trying to, I might go insane with the effort. I remember sitting in the guidance counselor's office during the mandated weekly meeting during the last semester of high school; that last semester when I was working so hard just to stay afloat and just to come within inches of the goal. I've never bothered with goals, whether the goals be big or small. I've never bothered much with promises, because I was always told I wouldn't, couldn't keep them. I never bothered with goals I'd been told I couldn't reach. I never bothered with anything that took any sort of work to have or to hold because I'd always been told I was lazy. You changed all of that for me for a while. Instead, now I'm left with the knowledge that I actually can't. Having someone's misguided and misplaced faith in you is a far, far worse feeling than having no one put anything into you in the first place. The misplaced faith then becomes the only thing holding you together, even if it feels like one person is tugging the other along, leading by knots that have got to come untied at some point or the rope will fray and then break. The rope was pulled so tightly, and dragged over so many sharp obstacles that there was no way it could ever survive, even from the very start. And if it makes me feel this badly, I can't even imagine how it makes _you _feel.

There's really nothing I can do about that now.

I'm powerless here. It is the most sickening feeling I've ever encountered and I don't know how to get rid of it. Just like the basics of the feelings I have for you, I have tried to get rid of these feelings and I don't know how to do it. They have twisted and turned around inside of me until it's all mixed together—the love, the certainty, the doubt and confusion—into knots that are too tangled and brittle for me to untie. I've tied these knots before, but they were never so small, so numerous, or so thread through my entire being. They will always be there now.

There's nothing I can do about that.

The knots I tied, I hope against all that is possible, will somehow hold us together. I was never kidding, or never uncertain, when I told you that you were the only one for me. The real trick, though, is I have to undo these knots if I'm going to sort anything out. I have to undo the knots and repair the damaged lines to carry on, to continue and to find something I can tie into that will last me my whole life through.

I have to untie all the ways I'm tied to you if I'm going to re-weave a rope that is so frayed, brittle, and so close to falling apart entirely. It's holding on by heartstrings that are not enough to get by, to truly survive. If I want to have any hope of tying myself to you again, I have to find a way to be strong enough, to feel whole and complete by myself first. Otherwise, I'm going to disconnect entirely and I have no idea what would come of me.

I tried cutting ties, hoping it would make it easier and more possible to just sail away. I tried, I almost succeeded in, sailing away from you one other time before. What I learned then is I didn't think it was possible, I didn't think I was strong enough to leave and know you were standing there.

I tried cutting the ties that hold me to you so I could leave and be free. Did you know that heartstrings won't be cut? They simply refuse to budge. So that's where I am now, holding on to you by all these tiny, tough little threads. I can't actually let you go, because I don't know how to cut those strings. All that means is, that for right now I'm a little lost. For now, I don't know where I'm going. For now, I'm just tugging on the rope, tied into it with all these strings I can't get rid of, and I'm just along for the ride. All I can do right now is hold on—and hope one day I'm strong enough to let it go.

The knots, I know, will be gone someday. Eventually they will loosen, slip open, and maybe the kinks in the strings they left behind won't last forever either.

But I've tied all these knots before. I've had practice with them. I've earned a reputation on the boat for the strength of my knots. There isn't another member of the crew who can tie them as fast or as securely as I do. If only I hadn't been so busy pouring all my strength into the knots, I could've seen what was happening and how, regardless of the damage done, the little tiny strings—the details—would actually be the strongest part of _me_.

They're the parts that were there when I wasn't looking. The parts I wasn't aware of. It wasn't intentional, the way you became a part of me. When I try to figure out when or how it happened now, in those flashes when my mind wanders and slides down that slope, I still can't find it. So maybe, maybe someday there will be a future. Maybe one day I won't be putting one foot in front of the other, reminding myself to keep breathing. Maybe one day I won't have to keep my head down for fear of the onslaught when I look up at the stars we shared. Maybe one day I won't have to tiptoe around all these intricate little knots so that I don't trip and fall. Maybe one day it will be as simple as just falling, allowing myself to slide down that slope, relying on the rope and the strings it's made of, to last.

Maybe one day, I will make it through all these knots that I've tied, and I can start brand new. The only way to really know is to untie the knots, one by one, and find out what's beneath. I have to undo all the promises I made, one by one, and find out what's left, find out what I'm really made of besides broken promises, before I can possibly even understand what those strings are really made of, and perhaps, trust something so fragile.

And maybe, just maybe, those strings won't burn my fingers on the way down without all these knots to run over first. Maybe someday it will be as simple as coming back and showing you that the kinks are worked out and all the rope burns are healed. Maybe yours will be too.

But I can't promise anything. Not anymore. It's all about the maybes. There's nothing I can do about that.

* * *

**A/N: **First part inspired by **Ingrid Michaelson**'s song "**Maybe**." Second part inspired by her song "**The Chain**." I obviously recommend both, but her new album is absolutely fantastic, too. Thanks for reading, but more importantly (hint) thank you for reviewing. By way of disclaimer, I own none of this stuff.


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